Jules: Progression III

12 November 2015

They Deserve Better

People spend a lot of time judging each other. They’ll judge a person for their weight, their hair, their profession, and so on. However, judging someone on their sex or their race, can lead to real world problems. Black women today are forced to stomach discrimination in all sorts of fields, including medical ones. Being a black women means having both stereotypes of being a thug and weak. Women in health are treated as if they are overreacting to their pain and pain in black men is simply ignored, stereotypes causing their suffering to go unnoticed. It is important to look at the situation from three aspects—how black men are viewed in science, how women are viewed in science, and how they meld and amplify to create how black women are viewed in science.

Women as a whole are almost systematically excluded from medicinal fields. Tara Culp- Ressler, senior editor at ThinkProgress and volunteer at several progressive religious nonprofits, states that even though women are more likely to suffer from chronic pain, men are more likely to receive appropriate treatment for it (“When”). The well-known study “The Girl Who Cried Pain” observed that medical professionals are more likely to disregard women’s pain as psychosomatic, that it is all in their heads (Ressler, “When”). The idea in medicine that women’s pain is mainly caused by emotions completely disregards the patient and focuses on stereotypes of women over-exaggerating and being dramatic, irrational, and hysterical. This idea is severely harmful to women, causing some women suffering from heart attacks to ignore or dismiss their pain so that they won’t be told they’re overreacting by doctors ( Dusenbery). This also stems from the fact that women’s heart attacks are very different from men’s. Even worse, doctors themselves do not know the differences in symptoms, so women that do go to the hospital while having a heart attack are being sent home because the doctors don’t recognize the issue (Ressler, “When”).

On top of women’s pain being considered less real than men’s, the medication they do receive can be less effective. For example, women only need half as much influenza vaccine as men to receive the same protection, but they are given the same amount (Moyer). Laurie Edwards, author of “In the Kingdom of the Sick: A Social History of Chronic Illness in America” and writing teacher at Northeastern Univeristy, claims that the difference in how men and women are affected by drugs stems from the fact that health professionals don’t like to recognize the differences between the sexes, like how women have hormonal cycles, smaller organs, and higher body fat composition (Edwards). Men do not have periods that fluctuate their hormones, making them an easier control group in studies (Moyer). However, this means women are severely underrepresented. A study published in the Journal of Women’s Health found that women patients in 46 clinical trials made up less than a quarter of the group (Moyer). Unfortunately, the inequality in gender goes even deeper, straight down into mice. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews published a study showing that eight out of ten animal trials held a bias for male animals; Neuroscientists “used 5.5 males for every one female, pharmacologists used five, and physiologists use 3.7” (Moyer).

Black people have issues with the disparity in medicine as well, stemming from stereotypes of aggression and strength. Matthew Hutson, author of The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking, a book about the psychology of superstition and religion, claims that white people see black people as superhuman, and it is hurting a lot of people. In as study he cites, Adam Waytz of Northwestern University and Kelly Marie Hoffman and Sophia Trawalter of the University of Virginia put white internet users in front of a picture of a white face and a black face and asked which person they thought was more likely to have different superhuman abilities like being able to run faster than a fighter jet and found that black people were selected 63.5 percent of the time. However, when whites were asked to judge a picture of a white man versus a black man at completing everyday tasks like walking the dog, white men won (Hutson). The fact that white people view black people as superhuman doesn’t translate into everyday tasks. Waytz believes that is because the superhuman bias comes from “long-held stereotypes about toughness, aggression, physicality, and sexuality. Basically, since whites identify blacks as athletic and aggressive, it’s easier to see them as superhuman (Hutson).

This stereotype of superhumaness, translates into the medical field. Black people are often prescribed fewer pain medications than whites, taking only around 1.8 medications compared to the 2.6 medicines among patients waiting for referral to a specialty pain center (“Black Patients”). Kurt Gray and Daniel Wegner partially blame moral typecasting, saying that the more someone is thought to be an active doer, the less people can picture them as susceptible to things being done, which explains why villains and heroes like Hitler and Dalai Lama are commonly thought of as impervious to pain (Hutson). Ressler observes that black people are more likely to suffer from fatal diseases because they are less likely to “have access to high-quality primary care and hospital staff” (Ressler, “Black Women”). Around 70 percent of the US population, including doctors, has a preference for white people (“Looking”). In fact, when people judges whether they though a black man or a white man would require more medication for different accidents, “blacks were chosen as more sensitive to pain only 31 percent of the time” (Hutson). Black people, when treated, are less likely to receive bypass surgery, kidney dialysis or transplants, and more likely to undergo aggressive and undesirable procedures like lower limb amputations for people with diabetes (“Looking”).

Works Cited

"Black People, Women Miss out on Strongest Medications for Chronic Pain." Medical News Today. MediLexicon International, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.

Culp- Ressler, Tara. "Black Women Are 40 Percent More Likely To Die From Breast Cancer Than White Women." ThinkProgress Black Women Are 40 Percent More Likely To Die From Breast Cancer Than White Women Comments. N.p., 20 Dec. 2013. Web. 5 Nov. 2015.

Culp- Ressler, Tara. "When Gender Stereotypes Become A Serious Hazard To Women’s Health." ThinkProgress When Gender Stereotypes Become A Serious Hazard To Womens Health Comments. N.p., 11 May 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.

Dusenbery, Maya. "Is Medicine's Gender Bias Killing Young Women?" Pacific Standard. Pacific Standard Magazine, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.

Edwards, Laurie. "The Gender Gap in Pain." The New York Times. The New York Times, 16 Mar. 2013. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.

"Emergency Departments Test Chest Pain Patients Differently, Based on Race, Gender and Insurance." Medical News Today. MediLexicon International, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.

Hutson, Matthew. "Whites See Blacks as Superhuman: And That's Not Necessarily a Good Thing." Slate. The Slate Group, n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2015.

"Looking for the Roots of Racial Bias in Delivery of Health Care." John Hopkins Medicine. John Hopkins, n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2015.

Moyer, Melinda Wenner. "Women Aren't Properly Represented in Scientific Studies." Slate. The Slate Group, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.

Parker-pope, Tara. "Tackling a Racial Gap in Breast Cancer Survival." The New York Times. The New York Times, 19 Dec. 2013. Web. 5 Nov. 2015.

Shen, Aviva. "HPV Vaccine Less Likely To Help Black Women Because Clinical Trials Were Mostly White." ThinkProgress HPV Vaccine Less Likely To Help Black Women Because Clinical Trials Were Mostly White Comments. N.p., 28 Oct. 2013. Web. 5 Nov. 2015.

19 November, 2015

How Doctors Are Unknowingly Killing Off Black Women

The brain uses judgement to filter out excess data in everyday life. It allows the brain to only take in stimulus it deems necessary for the situation and keeps people from becoming over sensitized. However, some judgments can lead to things like racism or sexism, causing people to quickly identify a person under a category viable for bias and then treating them accordingly. Unfortunately, since black women have more than one identifier for people to develop a bias against, they are often forced to stomach discrimination in many different aspects of their life, including their treatment at hospitals. When it comes to their health, women are treated as if they are overreacting to their pain and pain in black men is blatantly ignored, stereotypes causing their suffering to go unnoticed. It is important to look at the situation from three aspects—how black men are viewed in science, how women are viewed in science, and how they meld and amplify to create how black women are viewed in science. Black women in the US today are being discriminated against as women and black people as well as black women, which affects how they get treatment, how much medical professionals respect their illness, and how well the treatment works for them.

In general, women’s medical complaints are often not taken as seriously by health providers. In her article “When Gender Stereotypes Become A Serious Hazard to Women’s Health,” Tara Culp- Ressler, senior editor at ThinkProgress, asserts that even though women are more likely to suffer from chronic pain, men are more likely to receive appropriate treatment for it (Culp). One well-known study entitled “The Girl Who Cried Pain” observed that medical professionals are more likely to disregard women’s pain as psychosomatic, implying that the pain is imagined (Culp). The idea that a woman’s pain is imagined perpetuates stereotypes of women over-exaggerating and being dramatic, irrational, and hysterical. This is severely harmful to women, causing some women suffering from heart attacks to ignore or dismiss their pain so that they won’t be told they’re overreacting by doctors ( Dusenbery). This also stems from the fact that women’s heart attacks are very different from men’s. Even worse, doctors themselves do not know the differences in symptoms, so women that do go to the hospital while having a heart attack are being sent home because the doctors don’t recognize the issue (Culp, “When”). In fact, some of the symptoms of heart attacks that women get more than men are “jaw pain, upper back pain, a feeling of indigestion, nausea, and fatigue” and are often written off by doctors as symptoms of other diseases (Dusenbery). The reality is that women’s bodies are different than men’s but in general, the symptoms doctors are taught are for men. Women’s bodies being different affects how they show signs of illnesses like heart attacks, but it can also change how they react to their treatment.

In addition to being told that their symptoms are psychosomatic, when women are prescribed medication, it is often less effective. For example, Laurie Edwards, author of “In the Kingdom of the Sick: A Social History of Chronic Illness in America: and writing teacher at Northeastern University, informs that “Men metabolize caffeine more quickly, while women metabolize certain antibiotics and anxiety medications more quickly” and that in some instances they Furthermore, women only need half as much influenza vaccine as men to receive the same protection, but they are given the same amount (Moyer). Female bodies respond to the vaccine in a different way than men do, but it is not accounted for in any way. Edwards claims that the difference in how men and women are affected by drugs stems from the fact that health professionals don’t like to recognize the differences between the sexes, like how women have hormonal cycles, smaller organs, and higher body fat composition (Edwards). Men do not have periods that fluctuate their hormones, making them an easier control group in studies (Moyer). While it is easier to take men on as test subjects because of these differences, it means that other differences are hidden. Another fear when in trials for medication is that women can get pregnant, especially after a drug in the 1950s called sedative thalidomide caused some pregnant women to give birth to babies with missing limbs (Moyer). Looking back on that, people want to avoid repeating such a disastrous mistake, that they leave many women with a risk of getting pregnant out of their trials. A study published in the Journal of Women’s Health found that in 46 clinical trials, women patients made up less than a quarter of the group (Moyer). Unfortunately, the inequality in gender runs even deeper, showing itself in mice. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews published a study showing that eight out of ten animal trials held a bias for male animals; Neuroscientists “used 5.5 males for every one female, pharmacologists used five, and physiologists use 3.7” (Moyer). While it is true that scientists need to be careful when it comes to doing trials on women that could be or are pregnant, many pregnant women take medication, so it’s extremely important they are included.

Many black patients have issues with the disparity in medicine as well, stemming from stereotypes of aggression and strength. Matthew Hutson, author of The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking, a book about the psychology of superstition and religion, claims that white people see black people as superhuman, and it is damaging many people. In a study he cites, Adam Waytz of Northwestern University and Kelly Marie Hoffman and Sophia Trawalter of the University of Virginia put white internet users in front of a picture of a white face and a black face and asked which person they thought was more likely to have different superhuman abilities like being able to run faster than a fighter jet and found that black people were selected 63.5 percent of the time. However, when whites were asked to judge a picture of a white man versus a black man at completing everyday tasks like walking the dog, white men won (Hutson). The fact that white people view black people as superhuman doesn’t translate into everyday tasks. Waytz believes that is because the superhuman bias comes from “long-held stereotypes about toughness, aggression, physicality, and sexuality.” Basically, since whites identify blacks as athletic and aggressive, it’s easier to see them as superhuman (Hutson). Seeing black people as superhuman means doctors unconsciously treat black people as if they are not human in hospitals.

This stereotype of superhumaness, translates into the medical field. Black people are often prescribed fewer pain medications than whites, taking only around 1.8 medications compared to the 2.6 medicines among patients waiting for referral to a specialty pain center (“Black Patients”). Kurt Gray and Daniel Wegner of Harvard University partially blame moral typecasting, saying that the more someone is thought to be an active doer, the less people can picture them as susceptible to things being done, which explains why villains and heroes like Hitler and Dalai Lama are commonly thought of as impervious to pain (Hutson). Ressler observes that black people are more likely to suffer from fatal diseases because they are less likely to “have access to high-quality primary care and hospital staff” (Ressler, “Black Women”). Moreover, when they do see a health professional, many of these professionals have a bias. In fact, around 70 percent of the US population, including doctors, has a preference for white people (“Looking”). In fact, when asked to judge whether they though a black man or a white man would require more medication for different accidents, “blacks were chosen as more sensitive to pain only 31 percent of the time” (Hutson). Black people, when treated, are less likely to receive bypass surgery, kidney dialysis or transplants, and more likely to undergo aggressive and undesirable procedures like lower limb amputations for people with diabetes (“Looking”). Black people do not get the treatment they need for their illnesses and diseases.

When combining racism and sexism in medical fields, the discrimination magnifies, putting black women in a position where hospital trips seem to do little help, especially when they have breast cancer. On average, black women with any kind of breast cancer diagnosis will die three years sooner than white women (“Tackling”). Furthermore, even though nearly 70 percent of white women live at least five years after their diagnosis, only 56 percent of black women do (“Tackling”). Researchers from the Sinai Institute found that black women are 40 percent more likely to die of breast cancer (Pope). While skeptics might look at biological differences between black people and white people, with African-American women at a “greater risk of a more aggressive form of cancer known as triple negative,” researchers say that this doesn’t explain the gap in cancer survival because “those cancers account for only about 10 percent of diagnoses” (“Tackling”). In fact, racial bias against black women becomes even more apparent in HPV vaccines.

Unfortunately, black women are blatantly discriminated against when it comes to the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. Aviva Shen, current senior editor at ThinkProgress, reveals that the vaccine that “has cut teen girls’ risk of cancer in half is less likely to shield African American women” because according to new research “black women, who have higher rates of cervical cancer than the general population, are susceptible to different strains of HPV than the most common types from white women” (Shen). She goes on to cite epidemiologiests at Duke University School of Medicine that found that black and white women contract almost completely different types of HPV (Shen). This wouldn’t be as large of a problem if the strains that black women can contract were represented in the vaccines. However, Shen informs that “the only approved HPV vaccines in the US target the strains that most affect white women, leaving black women more or less unprotected” (Shen). Black women are being excluded from getting treatments that could save their lives, and it goes very deep into the system.

Black women face a severe disadvantage when it comes to their health. They have to fight against the stereotypes imposed on them whenever they talk to doctors in order to be correctly treated. They are not represented in clinical data, the medication they take is not designed for their body and needs, and doctors constantly unknowingly discriminate against them. A very large possibility facing black women is that they could go to the hospital with a heart attack and have the doctors not only not recognize their symptoms, but also not treat their pain as if urgent. There needs to be a systematic change in how medical professionals treat their patients. Medical students need to be taught the differences between how symptoms for the same disease present themselves in men and women. They also need to learn not to change their treatment based on their own personal bias. Clinical trials need to work harder to include women, black people, and black women, to make all medication more effective for the people taking it. Black women deserve better, and the first step to better health care for all is teaching both health professionals and the general public of the disparity within the medical field.